French PM attacks tax exiles after star departs

Henry Samuel Paris

FRANCE'S Prime Minister has criticised citizens fleeing the tax on high earners, saying they were greedy profiteers seeking to ''become even richer''.

Jean-Marc Ayrault spoke out after France's best-known actor, Gerard Depardieu, took up legal residence just over the border, in Belgium, with hundreds of other prosperous French people seeking lower taxes.

''Those who are seeking exile abroad are not those who are scared of becoming poor,'' Mr Ayrault declared after unveiling sweeping anti-poverty measures. They were leaving ''because they want to get even richer'', he said. ''We cannot fight poverty if those with the most - and sometimes with a lot - do not show solidarity and a bit of generosity.'' Announcing plans to spend up to €2.5 billion ($3.1 billion) by 2017 to help the poor, Mr Ayrault said poverty affected 12.9 per cent of the population in 2002, but the figure rose to 14.1 per cent in 2010.

France's Socialist President Francois Hollande, who famously once said ''I don't like the rich'', has pledged to tax annual income of more than €1 million at 75 per cent. British Prime Minister David Cameron said he would ''roll out the red carpet'' for any French residents fleeing the tax increase.

Mr Ayrault did not mention Depardieu on Monday, but the star drew fierce criticism from the left wing. The daily Liberation called him a ''drunken, obese petit-bourgeois reactionary''.